1876

by Gore Vidal

  Jamie frowned at the glass that had so recently been filled to the brim and was now, mysteriously, treacherously, empty. “You’re right there. Listen, you’re going back soon, aren’t you?”

  “Well, we had agreed on six pieces…”

  “Charlie, I’m doubling your price, which was too high to begin with.”

  “You will turn my head, dear boy.” And I turned my own head, having caught a glimpse of the elegant Collector of the Port and a few of his cronies.

  “But you must go back before the end of the month. Then I’ll want you to cover the convention at Cincinnati.”

  “I am too old to go to Cincinnati. Send Nordhoff.”

  “Can’t. I’m sending him South. He’s going to write about the cotton states and…”

  “I don’t know that I should speak to the two of you,” spoke Collector Arthur, tall, smiling, brutally charming, with brown eyes aglimmer in the blazing gaslight (the Hoffman Bar is extravagantly lit all day and most of the night). We shook hands. The Stalwart cronies at the bar eyed us with disapproval.

  “Chet, you’re a Conkling man, ain’t you?” Jamie enjoys politicians. But then, like Emma, he is spiritually African. “So be happy that Charlie here has gone and put Mr. Blaine in a pine-wood box and sent him home to Maine.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that, Jamie.” Arthur beamed at both of us as if he truly liked us; his manner is not unlike Blaine’s, though he lacks the master’s irony and mischievous self-deprecatory style. “We’re going to have quite a fine little dust-up at Cincinnati. Will you be there, Mr. Schuyler?”

  “Indeed he will!” Jamie answered for me. “It’s Charlie’s dream to get to know the real America! The West. The rolling plains. The wide—uh, Missouri, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” The Collector gave a mock shudder. “For me it’s all Indians west of Jersey City.”

  “Anyway tell Roscoe the Herald’s going to get him the nomination.”

  “He’ll be delighted.”

  “And then tell him how Tilden will beat him in November.”

  “He’ll be amused—to hear that. I hope to see you in Cincinnati, Mr. Schuyler.”

  The Collector joined his friends at the bar. “A good man, for a Stalwart. Don’t think he steals too much at the custom house. But he sure knows how to collect money for campaigns. Charlie, I’m serious. I want you to write about the Indians.”

  I heard Indians as Africans and nodded; then realized that Jamie does not know of my joke with Emma; then realized that he had said “Indians.” “What on earth is one to write about Indians?”

  “They’re out there, Charlie.” Jamie pointed in the general direction of Madison Square. “They’re wild, brutish. They hate the white man. Civilization. After Cincinnati, you take the cars to Chicago, then…”

  “Dear Jamie, you take the cars. I have no desire to see the Indians or the West.”

  “But you’ll go to Cincinnati. That’s settled.” Somehow he got me to agree that I shall return to Washington at the end of the month and then on to Cincinnati for the Republican Convention in the second week of June. “But after that I go to Newport. I am through with journalism.”

  “Surely, you’ll want to see your friend Governor Tilden nominated at the end of June. And of course you’ll be writing about the election in November. Are you absolutely certain that you don’t want to look at the Indians in between?”

  “As certain as I shall be of anything.”

  But Jamie was not listening; he was staring past me at the bar. I turned and saw that the stately Collector was talking intently with a dim-looking bearded gnome of a man. The Collector was leaning down from his great height as though eager, by diminishing himself, to elevate the little man.

  “That,” said Jamie, “is Jay Gould.”

  By cornering gold in ’69, Jay Gould helped bring on the Panic of ’73 that ruined so many of us. I was satisfied to observe that this true villain is as wretched a physical specimen as I have ever seen.

  “I can tell you what they’re talking about, too.” Jamie waved for yet another of his terrible cocktails. “Chet is getting money from Gould for Conkling.”

  “Will Gould give it?”

  “Of course. Did you know that the House is investigating Blaine?” Jamie’s shifts in subject are swift. And one must be alert.

  “There was talk of it. The Democrats…”

  “They’re meeting secretly now. It’s going to be just like the Belknap investigation.”

  “Do they have anything provable against him?”

  Jamie nodded. “If Mark Twain wasn’t so rich, I’d send him West. He’d be good on Indians. Show their savagery. Brutishness.” Jamie was now a bit drunk. “But he lives in Hartford. Can you imagine that? Mark Twain a Connecticut gentleman. It’s too much. On the other hand, that last book of his didn’t go over so well. Damn it, I’ll try him. Why not?”

  In the best of humours, I walked (next door practically) to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The early evening was unusually fine, with bright stars appearing one by one over Madison Park. At this hour the handsomest and most expensive of the prostitutes cruise up and down Fifth Avenue, dressed in the highest fashion (they are, in fact, known locally as “cruisers” or, in low quarters, as “hookers” from the way the girls will suddenly hook arms with a likely-looking suspect). But I was tranquil, beyond lust, as a result of this afternoon’s cigarine dalliance.

  I went up to my single room, and found it rather lonely. Emma is now sharing the Sanford suite with Denise. Emma believes that Sanford has taken the bait and is even now at Washington making an alliance with Blaine. I hope so. I am not as confident of her ability to manipulate Sanford as she is. But whatever he is doing or not doing, at least he is away from New York, and Emma and Denise are like two school girls in the luxurious suite at the Brunswick where the Sanfords maintain three personal servants, housed under the hotel’s eaves.

  Tonight Emma made a journey into Apgar-land, and I dined with John Bigelow in Gramercy Park. Dinner was set for the two of us in his study. The family is at his place up the Hudson.

  “When I’m here, there’s no room for them. There’s hardly room for me. All the comings and goings.” He looked tired and strained. “This is the first time I’ve been alone all day.”

  “Not quite alone.”

  Bigelow was amiable; even produced claret for me as an Irish maid served us dinner. A vase filled with splendid purple iris made me sneeze uncontrollably but he took no notice. It’s curious that in some years the pollen of certain spring flowers will bring on these attacks of sneezing, while in other years I am not distressed.

  I accepted with my by-now habitual greed Bigelow’s praise for the Blaine articles. I told him, using Nordhoff’s secret face, “There is more to come. I go back to Washington in a fortnight.”

  “I cannot wait! Now if you’d do the same for Bristow…”

  “You fear the honest man?”

  “Actually, we fear no one at all. The Governor is going to be nominated, and he is going to be elected by a good plurality. But…” Bigelow frowned at the beef on his plate.

  I sneezed into my napkin and softly blew my nose. I don’t think he noticed.

  “We’re going to have difficulty carrying New York State.” I found this hard to believe, but as Bigelow explained it, I see that there is indeed some danger for the Governor, whose assaults on Tammany Hall have not made him popular with the braves, particularly with the leader of Tammany Hall, one John Kelly who delights in the misnomer “Honest John.” Kelly has vowed to make mischief at the convention. “And if he doesn’t stop the Governor at St. Louis—and he won’t—he’ll see to it that Tammany will let the city go to the Republicans.”

  “What can you do?”

  I was told at such elaborate length that I soon realized that there is nothing for the Tilden forces to d
o but hope to get so many votes elsewhere that the defection of Tammany will not matter.

  “Outside New York we’re strong. Also, to be attacked by Tammany will prejudice many in our favour. And we have the South. We have California. We also have an excellent Newspaper Popularity Bureau.”

  “I’m still ready to do the campaign biography.”

  “What you’re doing now is far better. Anyway, we’ve hired someone named Cook, who’s busy potboiling away.” Bigelow wanted to know Bryant’s mood because “He is an odd creature and never exactly where you think he ought to be.”

  Bigelow is also curious about the two hundred Liberal Republicans who are currently meeting at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Many of them are literary men, and all of them are reformers with names like Adams, Lodge, Godwin. They are preparing a denunciation of Grantism. But “they’re not ready to come over to us.” Bigelow was sad.

  “Even when—if—when the Governor is nominated?”

  Bigelow nodded. “They really believe in the Republican party.”

  “So did you.”

  “But when it outgrew its original purpose, I left it. They should, too.”

  “Perhaps they’ll nominate their own candidate, as they did the last time.”

  But Bigelow thought not, pointing out that when the Liberal Republicans bolted the party in ’72 in order to nominate Horace Greeley (who was also nominated by the Democrats), Grant’s victory over the forces of virtue was absolute. The American electorate deeply dislikes the idea of reform, of good government, of militant honesty. So let us hope this year they will see in Tilden something sinister, corrupt, American!

  By the time our dinner was over, Green and a dozen other planners and advertisement-concocters had arrived. After a decent interval, during which I saw to it that each person would have his chance to praise my articles on Blaine (“Powerful work!” Mr. Green nearly broke my hand, so fervent was his clasp), I took my leave.

  3

  A MARVELLOUS AND ENTIRELY RELAXING DAY that began with a noon rendezvous in the new Grand Central depot at Forty-second Street. This was the first time that I had been inside Commodore Vanderbilt’s monument to a lifetime of triumphant rascality; yet it must be said in the old villain’s favour that before he managed through theft, violence, and fraud to put together his railroad empire, a passenger from New York City to Chicago was obliged to change trains seventeen times during the course of the journey. Now, thanks to Vanderbilt’s ruthless elimination of his rivals, the public is better served.

  The huge building, with its mansard-roofed towers, looks rather like the Tuileries, whilst the vast interior is reminiscent of the buildings at the Centennial Exhibition. But large as the depot is, it was filled with hurrying people. Americans seem always to be on the move these days. In my youth, we stayed at home.

  With some difficulty I found the Sanford car, where Emma and Denise were waiting for me (my luggage had been sent on earlier by the hotel).

  The two girls— I can’t think why I keep regarding these two women in their thirties as girls, but they seem so to me, and to themselves, too, from the most uncharacteristic (for Emma at least) way they giggle and whisper to each other as if just let out of school, no, convent, for a holiday in the country, which is exactly where we are now and what we are now doing.

  There is a good deal to be said for being rich, particularly in this country. I begin to see now the reality behind my old friend Washington Irving’s memorable phrase “The Almighty Dollar.” Not only is there a fascination in amassing huge quantities of money, preferably by illegal means and at the expense of everyone else in the country, but there is also the marvellous comfort and privacy that these riches confer. In Europe we are used to splendid houses, servants, “tong” by the ton, but a private railway car is something enjoyed only by an emperor. Here this luxury is quite common—at least in the high circles we frequent!

  With a sudden jerk our car was attached to a train just after noon. As we were borne north of the city, the hauntingly beautiful Hudson River was ever in our view while we contentedly dined.

  “It is really the loveliest river in the world,” was Emma’s sincere verdict, and I must say I, too, was overwhelmed by the sight of my natal river, viewed like a diorama from our moving dinner table.

  By the time lunch was comfortably digested, our car was detached at the Rhinecliff depot. Waiting for us on the siding were Ward McAllister and a pair of grooms from the Astor household. In frock coat and silk hat, McAllister looked remarkably out of place in that green rustic setting.

  Like an ambassador from one sovereign to another, he came aboard, full of compliments. “What a handsomely appointed car! Such good taste, Mrs. Sanford. Truly good taste.”

  McAllister touched the Brussels-lace antimacassars approvingly. I half expected him to examine the silver coffeepot for its markings. Then he told us that Mrs. Astor was “pleased” that we had made the arduous journey to stay with her at Ferncliff. “You will find a number of most charming people in the house. All friends, I am sure.”

  On that note, we climbed a great many steps (the town of Rhinecliff is indeed built on a cliff) to where the Astor carriage was waiting for us.

  In solemn state we drove along a charming country lane lined with stone houses from our Dutch period as well as with the frame houses of our English successors. But “successor” is not the right word, since we Dutch are still a majority in this county. Our English conquerors is more like what they were—and still continue to be, though their predominance is now being threatened by the Irish and by the Italians.

  At the end of a driveway lined with splendid elm trees was Ferncliff, a large new mansion of wood! Emma was as surprised as I. No doubt the Astors thought to save money, since wood is in such ample supply. Even so, the effect is very odd.

  As we approached the main entrance a sudden warm wind overpowered us with the scent of lilies-of-the-valley. For the first time Emma is beginning to feel—if not at home—at ease in this country, which until now she has regarded as, at best, exotic; at worst, provincial.

  We were shown to comfortable rooms, each with a splendid vista through trees of the bright river far below, not to mention the railroad. The sound of the trains carries eerily well, and all the magnates who have built houses along this high cliff are forced to listen to the trains just the way the humble folk who live beneath the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railway are deafened at regular intervals all through the day. Unfortunately, Commodore Vanderbilt’s trains continue through the night as well as the day and, perversely (at his orders?), they blow their whistles just as they pass beneath Ferncliff. But saving the trains, this is an idyllic house and setting. The guests are somewhat less idyllic and our hostess least of all. (I should have a padlock made for this book, but somehow I cannot see Mrs. Astor turning the pages, looking for references to herself). Yet she does her best—such as it is—to be agreeable, if not entertaining.

  There are a dozen other guests in the house. I think we have met all of them before and I certainly know all of their names, but fitting names to faces is no easy task. Stuyvesant, who ought to be the plump, pink snub-nosed man, turns out to be the slender Italianate old man, and so on. Ward McAllister does all that he can to make things go easily and as a result, they do not, really, go at all. But the food is good and the neighbours who join us from time to time (all named Chanler or Livingston) are considerably more amusing than the house guests, not to mention the Mystic Rose herself, on whose left I sat on the first night.

  “I cannot think how it all began.” She began in medias res. “I like and have always liked James Van Alen.” She fixed me with a stern look over the plate of pale hothouse asparagus that the footman was holding between us. I helped myself and quite agreed that James Van Alen is likeable, though I had not a clue as to what she was talking about.

  “People make such trouble.”

  “That h
as been my experience.”

  “They will gossip.”

  “True.”

  “They will tell untruths, Mr. Schemerhorn Schuyler.”

  “I have heard them tell untruths, Mrs. Astor, and quite gratuitously, too.”

  She frowned, not liking, I suspect, the long word which no doubt made her think of overtipping.

  “There was and has never been trouble between my husband and the Van Alen family.”

  “I should think not.”

  “We favoured the marriage.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Not ‘naturally’!” She looked unusually roseate about the gills—to which were attached enormous pendant rubies. “Our Emily should have remained free a little while longer.”

  “Ah, Emily, yes.” A newspaper account of the recent wedding of an Astor daughter surfaced through the miles of newsprint that my poor head contains.

  “But she fell in love. Girls fall in love, Mr. Schemerhorn Schuyler.”

  “Boys, too.” I wished to keep my side of the conversation as witty and vivacious as possible.

  “I don’t think they really do. Men are different. But we were pleased when James Van Alen became our son-in-law. And the rest is a tissue of lies.”

  “Envy, Mrs. Astor.” I murmured sadly, easily resisting an impulse to pat her large heavily jewelled hand.

  “My husband never said he did not want our daughter to marry into the Van Alen family.”

  “How could he? They are most distinguished.”

  This was the wrong response. The rose showed me a thorn. “There are those who might disagree. But”—the large hand resting on the highly polished mahogany table made itself into a very dangerous-looking fist—“not only did Mr. Astor not make the remark in question but old General Van Alen did not…”

  At this high point in the drama a train passed beneath the house causing the crystals in the chandeliers to chatter. Those guests from elsewhere stopped speaking, while those native to the region continued to talk right through the long, mournful, deafening whistle, as did Mrs. Astor, thus leaving me in perfect suspense about what General Van Alen did or did not do, for by the time the train was gone she had turned to address her other partner at table.